Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis of Rock Art Pigments

Portable X‐Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy of Pictographs: A Case Study From the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Texas

“…The use of portable X‐ray florescence spectroscopy (pXRF) is becoming more common in the field of rock‐art research for conducting elemental analysis of prehistoric pictographs. The first reported use of a pXRF spectrometer to study rock art was by Newman and Loendorf (), and subsequently this non‐destructive technique has been used worldwide to address different rock‐art research questions (e.g., Rowe et al . ; Huntley ; Roldan et al .…”

Strategies for14C Dating the Oxtotitlán Cave Paintings, Guerrero, Mexico

“…To distinguish between inorganic, mineral-based pigments and PyC pigments, we analyzed the paintings in situ using a handheld portable X-ray fluorescence (HHpXRF) spectrometer. This technique has proven effective in the study of rock art primarily because it is noninvasive and provides qualitative/semi-quantitative data on chemical elements in the paints (Koenig et al 2014; Newman and Loendorf 2005; Roldán et al 2010; Rowe et al 2011). The method is especially useful for discriminating between mineral-based and carbon-based pigments, and thus for identifying specific paintings that could potentially be 14 C dated (Beck et al 2013; Koenig et al 2014; Rowe et al 2011).…”

In Situ X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis of Rock Art Paintings Along the Coast and Valleys of the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile

“…This technique is also valued for its relatively low cost and short period of analysis 3 . The use of portable instruments, such as Raman and especially X-ray fluorescence, has proven quite useful for the physicalchemical characterization of Paleolithic art and more recently for rock paintings by contributing to their preservation and preventing unnecessary sampling [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] . In contrast, until recently, most of the work undertaken in Chile to identify paint components has involved invasive and destructive laboratory sample analysis methods, by means of X-ray diffraction [12][13][14] or scanning electron microscope combined with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy [15][16][17][18][19] .…”